Saturday, September 29, 2012

I am glad that I am not a M1 handphone user anymore, but the sight of my friend, who encountered network problems for the past month. It took us 3 trips to M1 & Samsung respectively to resolve the problems. Till now, I am still disturbed by some things that M1 did to my friend.

Why did you push the blame that it was a handphone problem when it was clearly a handphone network problem. Because of your advice, my friend nearly took the Micro SIM card which was not suitable for her phone.

Why you insist on a service report from Samsung, as it was very clear that on our 1st trip to Samsung service centre to update the firmware and do some test on the phone, it was clear that your SIM Card was not of the correct size, as it fitted into the SIM Card holder of the phone loosely, but it was okay with a Singtel SIM Card, as tested by Samsung Service Centre?

Why is it that on change of the 3rd SIM Card last week, which is working almost perfectly fine till now, your customer service officer still insist on the report. The reason for the almost fine remark, was because my friend had problems connecting to the 3G network when she was at the Samsung Service Centre to do a test for her handphone in order to get the report, which Samsung was reluctant to issue as they were afraid to be pushed around. Luckily, after I spoke to the duty manager at the Samsung nicely, he understood my friend’s predicament and issued a report about her Samsung Galaxy SII LTE immediately after they did a test on the handphone.

I would like to thank one of my friends for teaching me how to make M1 stop their taiji tactics by using this method.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

This post relates my friend’s nasty experience with M1 and how I had tried my best to help her to solve it. It was a nasty one, enough to make my friend decide to terminate her association with M1 when her contract expires in February.

My friend had signed up a Singtel line for her mum as her mum had some complaints about the M1 network recently and her mum’s contract with M1 had ended. Since my friend is working with Singtel, she is able to enjoy a special staff price if she signed any Singtel handphone, fibre broadband & Mio TV plans. She took the phone that was tied with her mum’s new Singtel line, Samsung Galaxy SII LTE.

The phone & her SIM card had worked fine for a week before she had to begin to restart her handphone about 6 to 20 times each day. I even tried talking to her on the phone, but the call was distorted and dropped a few times. As I have been a Samsung Galaxy S2 user myself, and I did not encounter any problems, I was surprised when she told me that the M1 Customer Service told her this after changing the SIM Card when she complained of no network coverage.

Change the normal SIM Card to a micro SIM.

Update the phone’s firmware to the latest version

I agreed with the 2nd point, but not the first, as I know that the phone uses normal SIM for Galaxy S2 and the best part was M1 charges for the micro SIM at $18 and levies a $10 monthly charge, which I thought was ridiculous as Singtel does it for free.

I went with her to Samsung to update her phone’s firmware and asked the customer service to test it on other telcos’ SIM Card. I was surprised to discover that the M1 SIM card was surprisingly loose when it was fitted to the SIM Card holder but not with the rest. The test proved that my faith in Samsung products was right. There was nothing wrong with the phone.

Another trip was arranged to M1 Customer Service Centre, where my friend was clearly frustrated that she had to reset her phone many times at her office, before she could call out, receive call or surf the Internet.

I told the customer service officer that if the phone cannot receive its network, it is a useless piece of brick. The customer service officer who advised my friend to get a micro SIM should be better trained with product knowledge. The purpose of a phone, is to call out, receive call and surf for information when needed. If my friend gets trapped in an emergency and she cannot call out, who is responsible? Why is your SIM Card so loose compared to other telcos?

I tried to get a termination of the handphone line based on these reasons, but was not able to. I was able to achieve a $60 rebate for my friend spread over 6 months.

I hope IDA steps in to regulate this poor service provider soon. Friends who are holding M1 line, please note the above problems highlighted.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

I decided to pamper myself and give myself a chance to destress from the hectic and stressful week by attending the concert of Jane, 張靚穎. I was really looking forward to her concert as I really liked some of her songs & her dolphin pitched voice.

I was glad that I was still able to get hold of her ticket and at a hugely discounted price for a CAT 1 seat.

I must say her concert was superb, with her great singing & many attractive concert outfits. I didn’t expect her to do rendition of a Jacky Cheung song which I thought she did it well. The only sad thing, there was no encore for her concert.

About two months ago, I had received a phone call via my mobile phone to do a survey about usage of credit card. I had not wanted to do the survey but was asked to do as it was claimed that it was short & only a few minutes of my time will be taken. I thought that was the end of the whole thing when I completed the whole survey.

During this week, I had received a phone call with regard to the abovementioned survey that I did. The person said that as I had participated in the survey, the company conducting the survey would like to reward me with a $800 voucher and a free handphone. My instinct kicked in immediately, having fallen victim to timeshare companies & lost money to a conman before. I told her that I did not wish to collect the gifts. She was rather persistent, together with her manager, as they kept calling me to collect the gift. In the end, I was sick and tired of their behaviour and went reluctantly to collect the gift.

The office was at The Corporate Office at Tanjong Pagar. When I reached there, the security guard asked me if I was going to #09-06, I told him Yes & he guided me to take the gift. Somehow, I had the feeling that the security guard was trying to hint something to me. I went up and went through the registration process and was escorted into a room where I was briefed about investment in gold. I was asked if I was interested to invest in gold. I told the person that I was not interested, and she tried to convince me to invest, but I continued to say no. The person knew that she could not get me to invest, decided to let me go.

I collected the free handphone and voucher after the talk, and told myself that my guess was right that there is indeed no free lunch in this world.

This post serves to share my experience and to warn my friends to be such gimmicks that has been going around recently and be careful of this.

Sunday, September 09, 2012

I was asked to plan for a movie outing before I went to bed by Estella on Thursday. I was surprised that despite the short notice, we were able to gather Raymond, Jonathan & Ah Liang for the movie, Ted at Plaza Singapura.

The movie is a funny one, although the introduction to the storyline was a bit unbelievable, but I guess without the unbelievable storyline, the movie would not have tickled us.